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 LIBRARY O F CONGRES S. % 
 
 Chap. /^.^.^.A.-3 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ) 
 
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 Legends and Poeti^y 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HUDSON. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 P. S. WYNKOOP & SON, io8 FULTON STREET. 
 
 1868. 
 

^'P 
 
 
 SYNOPSIS. 
 
 LEGENDS AND POETRT OF THE HUDSON. 
 
 Search made by the Indian tribes for a fountain of ^' Fire 
 Water," which, soon after the arrival of the Settlers, they 
 believed to be the cause of the crooked and winding 
 course of the River — Many of the Legends almost buried 
 in tlie ashes of our Fathers' Firesides. 
 
 THE SHATE-MUa 
 
 The Graves of our Heroes, Poets and Statesmen under the 
 clear sky by the side of bright waters — No place in our 
 Country where Poetry and Romance are so blended with 
 the Heroic of our History as along the banks of the 
 Hudson. 
 
INDIAN LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS, 
 
 The Death and Prophecy of the Great King of the Mohegans 
 atCastleberg— The Ship of Hendrich Hudson, ^'TheHalf 
 Moon.'' — The Storehouse of Legends and Traditions— The 
 Catskills— The Squaw Spirit of the Mountains — The last 
 Indian Battle upon the River. 
 
 DUTCH LEGENDS AND HISTORT. 
 
 The first Dutch Settlers — Wouter Yan Twiller — Their Hearth- 
 stones and Hospitable Firesides — The Ruins of an old 
 Mansion on an Island in a Lake in the County of Colum- 
 bia — A strange Poem, found here above an old mantle 
 signed ^ 'Annie K. Dote,'' entitled *'The Revolutionary 
 Captain who took the District School " — The Storm Ship, 
 whose crew afterward entertained Rip Van Winkle — 
 '' The Legend of Dobbs' Ferry," a Poem — The Customs 
 and Habits of our Mothers, as well as our Fathers — The 
 old Dutch Churches. 
 
 REVOL UTIONAR Y SKE TCHES, 
 
 The First Messenger along the old Post Road proclaiming 
 War — The Battle Grounds of Saratoga, Stillwater, Old 
 
Ticonderoga, Stony Point, White Plains— The Heights of 
 Harlem — the Heights of Brooklyn — West Point — Arnold 
 — ^Andre — Paulding — Story of Nathan Hale — Monument 
 of Kosciusko- 
 
 BEAUTY OF ITS SCENERY, 
 
 Sleepy Hollow — Old Cro-Nest— The Man in the Mountain — 
 Catterskill Falls "—The Cliff in front of the Mountain 
 House at Sunrise— The A-ttraction of the Mountain House 
 at the same hour — Sunnyside, Idlewild, and Undercliff-— 
 Irving, Willis, and Morris. 
 
THE LEGENDS AND POETRY OF 
 THE HUDSON. 
 
 T was for a long time a traditional 
 belief among the Indian tribes wbich 
 dwelt along the banks of the Hudson^ that the 
 water, ages ago, broke through the opposing 
 barrier of the Highlands, draining a great lake 
 and forming the channel of the river. How 
 they became possessed of an idea so much in 
 accordance with the results of science, or where 
 
10 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 they obtained many other traditional notions 
 quite consistent with the progress of humanity, 
 will probably ever be shrouded in a mystery as 
 difficult to unravel as an attempt to trace the 
 genealogy of the Incas to the time when 
 Ararat's cradle rocked the infant world. But 
 soon after the arrival of our worthy ancestors, 
 and their quiet settlement at CommunipaWj a 
 species of Jug-glerj — a sort of modern ^^ trav- 
 eling companion'' to civilization — tended to 
 confuse somewhat the minds of the natives, 
 disturbing many of their original beliefs, and 
 particularly this traditional idea concerning the 
 winding channel of the Shate-muc. Whether 
 this refinement of European extraction — so uni- 
 versally appreciated by the aborigines — was 
 introduced to simplify the art of making 
 bargains in respect to the purchase of furs and 
 the acquisition of territory ; or whether its 
 ameliorating effect on a race unused to much 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 11 
 
 gaiety of temper and flow of spirits only- 
 afforded an innocent amusement to our philo- 
 sophical progenitors^ and suggested the original 
 plan of those irregular zigzag fences which still 
 stand in our valleys and along our hill-sides, the 
 muse of history and the pinions of tradition 
 have failed to record. It came, however, in 
 some way, to be generally believed by the Ked 
 men, that the crooked and winding channel of 
 the river was not wholly attributable to its 
 own inclination ; but, deep in the Northern 
 forests, near some favorite haunt of the ^^ Great 
 Spirit,'^ a fountain of what they termed ^^ Fire 
 Water,'' always clear and sparkling, bubbled 
 from the ground, and the river, drinking of 
 this water as it flowed into its bosom, naturally 
 found a wandering way to the sea. In accord- 
 ance with this theory, they rejected their 
 former idea that the Highlands had ever been 
 sundered, and chose rather to believe that the 
 
12 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 mountains and little hills, impelled by curiosity, 
 had come from the East and the West to see 
 this strange phenomenon, and either attracted 
 by each other's beauty, or loving the music of 
 the water, had willingly remained upon its 
 banks. To find this wonderful fountain, the 
 warriors were willing to encounter any perils 
 and endure any hardships. Every little lake 
 in the North Woods which found an outlet in 
 the river was visited with a zeal and eagerness 
 which gives the - blush to modern explorers ; 
 every trickling rivulet was tasted, but the clear 
 cold water only laughed merrily in their faces 
 and sweetly kissed their parched lips as they 
 stooped to drink of its purity. Up the tribu- 
 tary streams, far into the land of the Mohawks, 
 almost to the hunting grounds of the Oneidas ; 
 up the rapid Sacandaga to beautiful '' Lake 
 Pleasant,'' mirroring in its sleeping waters the 
 same pines and hemlocks as two hundred years 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 13 
 
 ago ; along the bright-flowing Hoosick, beyond 
 the ^^ Strange Chimney'' of doubtful utility, 
 and the ever green ^^ Council Square'' where 
 the tribes were wont to assemble in the realm 
 of the Schacokes ; up the Battenkill to the 
 clear fountain which murmurs a response to 
 the gentle flowing of Otter Creek, on its way 
 to the blue waters of Champlain ; up the 
 Poestenkill, honored in later years by an im- 
 probable legend ; up the Kinderhook and 
 Claverack Creeks, frequently referred to in 
 rythmic measure by the fair daughters of 
 Columbia ; far away to the Taghconic range, 
 whose Eastern slope loses its waters in the 
 deep ravines of the old Stockbridge Chiefs, and 
 the beautiful hills where the Green Eiver and 
 Jansen's Creek, born of twin fountains, bid 
 each other an early adieu ; the former seeking 
 the valley of the Housatonic, while the latter, 
 joyful with the music of Bash-Bish, brings to 
 
14 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 the Eastern bank of the river a heart full of 
 traditional beauty. But in vain! The Helder- 
 berg Hills and the lordly Catskills gave no 
 token of this strange fountain^ more wonderful 
 than those fountains of Love and Hatred near 
 the fabled palace of Alcina. The warriors only 
 returned to speak of the crystal lakes and 
 little brooklets^ w^hose sources, deeply buried 
 in the Northern forests for long years, will 
 never know the sunshine. 
 
 And although the fabled fountain is still 
 undiscovered, yet these early and diligent 
 explorers learned much of other tribes and 
 customs, and had many stories to relate of the 
 fairy lands they visited. So every person who 
 wanders along the banks of our river, whether 
 in search of its legendary history or strolling 
 without a purpose amid its monuments and its 
 beauty, must necessarily gather many beautiful 
 stories from lips which will soon be silent, some 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 15 
 
 local in their nature^ and others of general 
 interest ; more than thiS; beautiful sketches^ to 
 be completed in dreams and colored in sweet 
 Tiours of reverie, are stamped for ever upon the 
 recollection to make cheerful the /-gallery of 
 memory/' where we all are hanging some new 
 picture day by day. Bright among these 
 pictures, as we look back through the elm- 
 ■shaded vista of four years, are the Summer 
 strolls along the banks of the Hudson, and the 
 fairy castles, with turret, dome and battlement, 
 which the setting sun often builds upon the 
 Catskills, are full of reality to some of our 
 readers, although the foundations are not laid 
 in mortar and the superstructures are only 
 sunbeams. In these wanderings we have found 
 a few strange stories and legends almost lost 
 and forgotten in that most sad of burial 
 places — the ashes of our father's fire-sides. 
 And although others may have already obtained 
 
16 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 the '' Golden Fleece/' and given to the world 
 a master history of their voyages and adven- 
 tures^ there still remain beautiful legends to be 
 narrated concerning this land of Colchis. To 
 collect a few of these legends and some of the 
 poetical incidents of the history of our river^ in 
 the form of an essay^ was undertaken at the 
 request of friends^ and read in some of the 
 towns and cities along its banks. The old 
 Indian traditions^ the Dutch legends^ the 
 Kevolutionary sketches^ and the beauty of its 
 scenery^ were crowded into a few pages of 
 manuscrijDt that the patience of kind hearers 
 might not be wearied. We have been asked to 
 print it exactly as delivered^ without changing 
 a word or sentence^ and^ save the insertion of 
 a quaint poem — the original manuscript of 
 which lately fell into our possession^ entitled^ 
 '^ The Eevolutionary Captain who took the 
 District School '' — we present it verhathn, 
 
OF THE HUDSON RIVER. 17 
 
 literatim^ punctuatim. And whether an hour 
 is passed pleasantly or otherwise in perusing 
 *^^ The Legends and poetry of the Shate-muc/' 
 it is at least gratifying to the writer, and all 
 who love our beautiful Hudson, that the River 
 will ever flow on just as tranquilly to the sea, 
 and the little brooks which supply it will con- 
 tinue to sing as musically and flow as gently as 
 ever did " Sweet Afton '' along our own happy 
 cottages where live the True, the Good and 
 the Beautiful. 
 

 ?s^^sS 
 
 THE SHATE-MUO. 
 
 N a lecture recently delivered by a late 
 member of the English Parliament^ 
 in some of the towns along the banks of 
 our Eiver^ there was the following sentence : 
 '^ When I am visited by my friends from 
 America and show them the river Thames, 
 they turn away laughing and say, ' Why 
 there are ditches full of water running througli 
 our farms larger than that ;' but Avhen I 
 take them to Westminster Abbey and show 
 them the burial places of our Kings, our 
 PhilosoDhers and our Poets, the glorious 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 19 
 
 memories which cluster about that solemn 
 place fill them with wonder and astonishment/' 
 Perhaps he did not intend in this sentence to 
 speak lightly of the American People or their 
 history : but if it was the expression of that 
 overbearing sjoirit which some are inclined to 
 consider natural to the English People^ and it 
 was only a polite way of saying^ ^^ You 
 Americans have indeed splendid scenery^ cloud- 
 capped mountains and majestic rivers : but 
 where are the graves of your Heroes^ your 
 Poets and your Statesmen/' we would answer, 
 ^^ It is true we have not a history reaching 
 back through thirteen centuries^ lost in the 
 dim twilight of fable ; we have no monumental 
 ruins covered with the ivy of ages almost un- 
 known: and yet along the beautiful banks of 
 our streams and rivers stand monuments which 
 need no antiquity to give them glory^ or bolts 
 and bars to preserve them from the hand of 
 
20 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 sacrilege/' England can well be proud of the 
 names carved on her marble sepulchres (and 
 we share the glory with her), but when she 
 asks, "Where are the graves of your Heroes, 
 your Statesmen, your Poets, and your Martyrs 
 in the sacred cause of liberty,'' we point to 
 Mount Vernon, to the quiet shades of Ashland, 
 to the green groves of Monticello, to the grave 
 of a martyred President, to the plain slab at 
 Sunny side, to the tombless dead of Saratoga, 
 and more than all, if she asks for the graves of 
 Heroes, we point to the Southern battle-fields, 
 to the mounds of those who perished in South- 
 ern dungeons, over whose unknown graves fair 
 flowers spring up as if conscious of those who 
 sleep beneath, and upon which the nightly 
 stars look down, crystal lights in the blue 
 dome of nature's temple, compared with which 
 the arches of Westminster Abbey are unworthy 
 of a thought ! 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 21 
 
 ''^ On fame's eternal camping ground 
 Their snow-white tents are spread^ 
 
 And glory guards with solemn round 
 The bivouacs of the dead/' 
 
 We have no national Thesaurus of our 
 illustrious departed, no aristocratic arcade of 
 whited sepulchres or arched avenues of ^^dull, 
 cold marble/' where royal magnificence and 
 worthy genius are separated from their dearest 
 friends, and live, even in their burial, an 
 eternal exile from the green graves of those 
 they loved. But we turn with pride as a 
 people from the ^^ gathering place" of England's 
 glory to the mountains, streams and rivers of 
 our own country, where the echo of heroic 
 deeds still lingers. 
 
 Here are the burial-places of our Heroes, 
 Poets and Statesmen, under the clear sky, by 
 the side of bright waters, sleeping in the 
 very spots their memory and deeds have 
 
22 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 hallowed ; and as our first martyrs and States- 
 men^ by the noble struggle of thek lives, 
 achieved here a Truth which is stranger than 
 fiction — the successful revolution of three 
 millions of people against the most powerful 
 nationality in the world, and thus blended with 
 the early poetry and romance of these hills and 
 valleys an insj)iration born of patriotism, it 
 is fitting that their graves should be scattered, 
 as we find them, among the mounds of a 
 strange people who once possessed these broad 
 hunting grounds. 
 
 And there is no other place in our country 
 where this poetry and romance are so strangely 
 blended with the heroic of our history as along 
 the banks of our Hudson. No other river 
 where the waves of diff'erent civilizations have 
 left so many ivaifs upon the banks ; no valley 
 where the fireside-tale is more poetical, where 
 even the streams and townshii:)s, by the very 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 23 
 
 names they bear, perpetuate our early history ; 
 and we trust that all who love our river, 
 and sometimes sigh in the beautiful lines of 
 Whittier — 
 
 " That our broad lands — our sea-like lakes. 
 And mountains piled to the clouds — ''^ ^ ^ 
 <i >> iij Our valleys, lovelier than those 
 Which the old poets sung of — should hut figure 
 On the apocryphal chart of speculation. 
 As pastures, wood lots, mill -sites with the 
 
 privileges. 
 Eights and appurtenances, which make up 
 A Yaiikee Paradise, Even their names. 
 Whose melody yet lingers like the last 
 Vibration of the Red Man's requiem. 
 Exchanged for syllables significant 
 Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look kindly 
 Upon this effort to call up the ghost 
 Of our dim past, and listen with pleased ear 
 To the responses of the questioned shade/' 
 
 Four hundred years are not yet completed 
 since the '^ Te Deum Laudamus '' burst from 
 grateful hearts as the first footsteps of . a 
 
24 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 civilized people pressed the shores of a new 
 world. Four brief centuries, hardly space 
 sufficient for the nap of Italy, wearied with the 
 struggles of two thousand years, have worked 
 in our own country a change more marvelous 
 than a dream, revealing in quick panoramic 
 succession, the various phases from the wildest 
 tradition to the most stirring history, from the 
 lowest barbarism to a refined civilization. This 
 first song of a Christian people upon our 
 shores, ^^We praise thee, Grod,'' was the 
 fitting dedecation of a country where free 
 institutions were to find an enduring home, 
 and every year takes up the words of Columbus 
 and his bold followers, ^^Te Deum Laudamus!'' 
 Back to the old country were carried strange 
 stories of the people dwelling upon these wild 
 and uncultivated shores. The Philosopher and 
 Alchemist again dreamed of the fountains of 
 eternal youth — the elixir of life. The Poet saw 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 25 
 
 m imagination the Arcadia of the West, hung 
 with the apples of Iduna and the Avaricious 
 saw a land of gold and silver ! i 
 
 Nor were the tales told by the Indian council- 
 fires less strange and marvelous, every year 
 taking new form where tradition was the only 
 history. '' How the pale face come from the 
 land of the sun, borne by a great bird across 
 the big waters/' and many a chief seemed to 
 see, as it were in prophetic vision, the westward 
 march of his people. And it is related of the 
 great chief of the Mohegans, the king of the 
 tribes which dwelt along the '^ king of rivers,'' 
 (for so they called our Hudson) as his spirit 
 was passing away to the hunting grounds of 
 the Great Manito, that he pointed southward 
 and said, '^1 see the traditions of my fathers 
 are true. I see /ar, far away the ^big bird' 
 again floating upon the waters, so far my 
 warriors that you can not see it, but ere two 
 
26 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 Autumns have scattered the leaves upon my 
 grave^ the pale face will claim our hunting 
 grounds/' 
 
 And when the ship of Hendrick Hudson, 
 appropriately christened ^^ The Half Moon/' 
 — its bow and stern rising high above the centre 
 of the deck^ — floated about as leisurely as its 
 god-mother in the ethereal blue along the 
 little villages of cedar wigwams, the warriors 
 remembered with sadness the last words of 
 their chief. And it may still be in the 
 memory of some living that one of this tribe, 
 l)owed with age, returned to look for the last 
 time upon the river of his fathers ; and as he 
 stood alone upon the hills of the Shate-muc, 
 and saw the changes of three quarters of a 
 century, in his silent submission we can well 
 imagine he felt even more than the sad lines of 
 the Poet : 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 27 
 
 ^^ ! stream of the mountains^ if answer of 
 
 thine 
 Could rise from thy waters to questions of mine, 
 Methinks, through the din of the thronged 
 
 banks, a moan 
 Of sorrow would swell for the days that are 
 
 gone/' 
 
 Many years ago the prophecy of the old 
 chief was more than fulfilled, and nothing now 
 remains of many of the river tribes, save here 
 and there the mound of some warrior and 
 strange legends or traditions. Perhaps none 
 so strange or romantic as ^^ The Lover's Leap,'' 
 on the banks of the Housatonic, where an 
 Indian maiden is said to have jumped from a 
 cliff two hundred feet high, with a blue cotton 
 umbrella, and escaped unharmed. But where 
 she obtained the umbrella in her flight, or how 
 from this strangely poetical circumstance, the 
 oliff was ever called "^ The Lover's Leap," no 
 ne is able to tell. Or, perhaps we have no 
 
28 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 legend so beautifully narrated as thy story of 
 ^^ Monument Mountain/' by Bryant, wherein a 
 beautiful Indian girl is represented as dying all 
 for love. But the real legend, when partially 
 disrobed of its poetic garb, is simply that about 
 seventy years ago, an Indian woman, 
 
 "Whose hair ^^was gray. 
 And gray with years '' 
 
 Hated by the whole community, was induced to 
 leap from the cliff for a quart of rum, and the 
 true version of the story can be seen uj)on the 
 five dollar bills of the old Maihaiwe Bank. 
 We have no legends exactly like these, nor 
 does the dark cruelty of a ^^ Wyoming Mas- 
 sacre'' stain our banks. But the great stoi^e- 
 house of legends and traditions, which no other 
 river possesses are the Catskills, which, about 
 midway between the ocean and the crystal 
 fountains of the North, stand like sentinels of 
 the valley. They were called by the Indians 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 29 
 
 the Onti-0-ra's^ or Mountains of the sky^ as 
 they sometimes seem like clouds along the 
 horizon. This range of mountains was sup- 
 posed by the Indians to have been originally a 
 monster who devoured all the children of the 
 Eed Men^ and that the Great Spirit touched 
 him when he was going down to the salt lake 
 to bathe^ and here he remains. ^^ Two little 
 lakes upon the summit were regarded the eyes 
 of the monster, and these are open all the 
 summer ; but in the winter they are covered 
 with^a thick crust or heavy film ; but whether 
 sleeping or waking tears always trickle down his 
 cheeks. In these mountains, according to In- 
 dian belief; was kept the great treasury of 
 storm and sunshine, presided over by an old 
 squaw spirit who dwelt on the highest peak of 
 the mountains. She kept day and night shut 
 up in her wigwam, letting out only one at a 
 time. She manufactured new moons everjr 
 
30 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 month^ cutting up the old ones into stars/' and, 
 like the old ^olus of mythology, shut the winds 
 up in the caverns of the hills. 
 
 There is also a traditional account that the 
 last Indian battle fought upon our river was 
 between the Mohawks and the Mohegans, and, 
 as the old king of the Mohegans was dying after 
 the conflict was over, he commanded his regalia 
 to be taken off and his son put into the king- 
 ship while his eyes were yet clear to behold 
 him. Over forty years had he worn it from the 
 time he received it in London from Queen Anne, 
 on all festive occasions, whether of war or peace. 
 He asked his son to kneel at his couch, and, 
 putting his withered hand across his brow, 
 placed the feathery crown upon his head and 
 gave the silver-mounted tomahawk, symbols of 
 power to rule and power to execute. Then, 
 looking up to the heavens, he said, as if in de- 
 spair for his race: ^^The hills are our pillows 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 31 
 
 and the broad plains to the west our hunting 
 grounds^ our brothers are called into the bright 
 wigwam of the Everlasting^ and our bones lie 
 upon the fields of many battles^ but the wis- 
 dom of the dead is given to the living." 
 
 On the same evening^ just as the sun was 
 bidding the world ^^ good night/^ and the shad- 
 ows^ creeping from their hiding-places^, deep- 
 ened the hue of the distant Cat skills where the 
 setting sun was again closing it's daily volume 
 of untarnished blue and gold^ they laid the 
 chief in his last bed^ at the foot of the 
 hill not far from Castleberg. Any one, it is 
 said; will tell you, if you venture there, where 
 the Indian graves are made; and, in the lan- 
 guage of the writer who has chronicled this 
 battle, '' From that Castleberg his grave is seen 
 with this mountain stream placidly winding 
 around it, and the great river over which he 
 reigned so long still winds on with majestic 
 
32 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 flow; and . as we have stood on that rising 
 ground at sunset^ looking to the mountains on 
 which there lay palaces^ castles, islands, and 
 smooth blue lakes of spiritual beauty, we have, 
 at times, almost envied the men who imagined 
 these near glories to be the grounds and the 
 streams to which the last king of the rivers de- 
 parted '' — for his son never ruled a day. 
 
 These are some of our early legends and we 
 ought not willingly let them die, for they have 
 more of poetry and more of truth than the old 
 struggles of Grods and Heroes; the wars of the 
 Cid, or the adventures of Launcelot and the 
 Knights of the Bound Table. Under the green 
 forest spires of ^.^ God's first temples'' these war- 
 riors of the forest continually worshiped the 
 incarnation of the G-reat Spirit, seeing the hand 
 ^f the Manito in all creation. They knew no 
 idols! for, in the sim^plicity of their lives, they 
 lived so near to nature that they heard the beat- 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 33 
 
 ing of her hearty and in ^' the bright wigwam 
 of the Everlasting/ far to the southwest, they 
 believed a deity resided who cared for his child- 
 ren, and continually they feared and adored 
 him. 
 
 '^ And is not nature's worship thus — 
 
 Ceaseless, ever going on; 
 Hath It not a voice for us 
 
 In the thunder or the tone 
 Of the leaf-harp, faint and small. 
 
 Speaking to the unsealed ear, 
 
 Words of blended love and fear 
 Of the mighty soul of all.'' 
 
 Closely blended with these Indian traditions 
 we have the early tales and legends of the first 
 Dutch settlers along the rich valley of the Hud- 
 son and its tributary streams. Living peace- 
 ably with the world, and having no ambition 
 reaching beyond the welfare of their friends 
 and neighbors, with no pleasures beyond their 
 own quiet firesides, a proverbial hospitality was 
 
34 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 developed, and the early history of the Hudson 
 gives us a picture of contentment, of pure hap- 
 piness and rural simplicity, which no other sec- 
 tion of our country has ever been able to pre- 
 sent. They did not bring with them, perhaps, 
 from the fatherland the enthusiasm of those 
 who, escaping from the tyranny of England, 
 felt the glow and impulse of Liberty, as it was, 
 rising from the grave of bigotry, but they 
 brought thsbt persistency which, in years before, 
 had diked Holland from the ocean and made the 
 marshes of the old Batavii a hailing-place 
 among the nations- — a persistency which was 
 destined to make the little valley of the Hud- 
 son the richest in our country, and at its portal 
 place the Emporium of the Continent. They 
 may have been less interested in discussing the 
 prated rights of man, but we imagine they en- 
 joyed themselves quite as well as the inhabi- 
 tants of witch-haunted Boston in the long days 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 35 
 
 of Puritan fanaticism. They were not an im- 
 pulsive people^ and yet the citizens of New 
 York city passed the first resolutions to import 
 nothing from the Mother Country, burned ten 
 boxes of stamps sent from England before any 
 other colony or city had made even a show of 
 resistance, and, when the Declaration was read, 
 pulled down the leaden statue of George III, 
 from its pedestal in Bowling Green, and moulded 
 it into Eepublican bullets* 
 
 No doubt his royal majesty of England had 
 read of Narcissus being changed into a flower. 
 Daphne into a laurel, and the teeth of the 
 Dragon springing into armed men; but, prob- 
 ably, he never thought that it was reserved for 
 the quiet and honest burghers of New Yori 
 city, upon a little island, purchased for $24,'* 
 
 * Hoogh moghende Heeren : 
 
 Hiere is ghister 'tschip '' Wapen van Amsterdam'' aenge- 
 komen en is den 23 September uyt Niew Nederland gesijlJ 
 ujt de rivier Mauritius. Rapporteren dat ons volk daer 
 goed is en vreedigh leven, hare vrouwen hebben oock kinde- 
 
36 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 on the outskirts of civilization, to outdo classic 
 mythology by converting this statue of the 
 King of England into a circulating medium of 
 grape and cannister specie, bearing the date of 
 the glorious issue, July the 4th, 1776. So 
 much for the spirit and persistency of the first 
 Dutch settlers and their worthy descendants. 
 But we would be doing evident injustice to the 
 laborious researches of the veracious Mr. Died- 
 rich Knickerbocker if we passed over in silence 
 
 ren aldaer gebiert; hebben 't eylandt Manhattan van de 
 Wilde gekocht voor de waerde van 60guildens; is groot 
 11000 morgen. Hebben daer alle koren half Meij gezayd en 
 half Augustus gemayd. Daervan seyn de monsterkens van 
 Zomerkoren, als tarwe, rogge, garst, haver, boucweyt, ka- 
 narigarst, boontjes en vlas. P. Schaghen. 
 
 Amsterdam, 5 Nov. 1626. 
 
 [translation.] 
 High and Mighty Lords : 
 
 Yesterday arrived the ship "The Arms of Amsterdam." 
 She sailed from the river Mauritius (Hudson), m the New 
 Netherlands, on the 23d September. They report that our 
 folk there are prosperous and live in peace. They have pur- 
 chased from the Indians, fur the sum of 60 guilders, [about 
 $24,] the island Manhattan, which is 11,000 morgen [13,920 
 acres] large. They have already sowed grain by the- middle 
 May, and reapt by the middle of August ; samples of Summer 
 crops have come, such as wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, 
 Canary seed, beans, and flax. P. Schaghen. 
 
 Amsterdam, 5th Nov., 1626. 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 37 
 
 the golden age of Walter the Doubter^ who 
 ruled from 1633 to 1638. In the charming and 
 graphic style of this truthful historian^ whose 
 q^uiet humor we always read with renewed 
 pleasure^ this renowned governor was ^ ^descended 
 from a long line of Dutch Burgomasters^ who 
 had comported themselves with such singular 
 wisdom and propriety that they were never 
 either heard or talked of^ which^ next to being 
 universally applauded^ should be the ambition 
 of all magistrates. He was a man shut up 
 within himself like an oyster^ but then it was 
 allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So in- 
 credible was his gravity that he was never 
 known to laugh or to smile through the whole 
 course of a long and prosperous life; and if a 
 joke was uttered in his presence, that set light- 
 minded hearers in a roar^ it was observed to 
 throw him into a state of perplexity. He daily 
 took his four stated meals^ appropriating ex- 
 
38 LEGENDS AND POETKY 
 
 actly an hour to each. His face^ that infallible 
 index of the mind, presented a vast expanse un- 
 furrowed by any of those lines and angles which 
 disfigure the human countenance with what is 
 termed expression. He was exactly five feet six 
 inches in height, and six feet five inches in cir- 
 cumference/' Such was the renowned Walter 
 the Doubter, and no wonder, in the adminis- 
 tration of such a man, '' the profoundest tran- 
 quility and repose reigned throughout the prov- 
 ince.'' ^' These were the honest days," continues 
 our historian, ^^ when a passion for cleanliness 
 was the leading principle in domestic economy, 
 when the whole house was constantly in a state 
 of inundation under the discipline of mops^ 
 brooms and scrubbing brushes, when every wo- 
 man also wore pockets — ay, and that, too, of a 
 goodly size, fashioned with patch-work with 
 many curious devices, and ostentatiously worn 
 on the outside. These were, in fact, convenient 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 39 
 
 receptacles where all good housewives carefully 
 stored away such things as they wished to have 
 at hand, by which means they often came to be 
 incredibly crammed ; and there was a story cur- 
 rent that the lady of the worthy governor once 
 had occasion to empty her right pocket in 
 search of a wooden ladle^ when the contents 
 filled a couple of corn-baskets, and the utensil 
 was discovered lying among some rubbish in 
 one corner; but we must not give too much 
 faith to all these stories — the anecdotes of these 
 remote periods being very subject to exaggera- 
 tion/' It was also a favorite expression with 
 our historian, when seated by the fireside of the 
 old burghers, in some of his various wanderings 
 from the good old town of Schaghticoke to his 
 much loved isle of Manahatta, that ^^ We live 
 in the midst of history, mystery and romance. 
 He who would find these elements, however, 
 must not seek for them among the modern im- 
 
40 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 provements. He must dig for them as for 
 Kidd the pirate's treasures, in out of the way- 
 places, and among the ruins of the past/' So 
 we have only to visit these gable-roofed houses, 
 with low, broad chimneys, scattered through 
 our valleys, to learn the history of these good 
 old days. In some of these we hear again 
 
 The humming of the wheel, 
 
 Strange music of the days gone by, 
 
 We hear the clicking of the reel. 
 Once more we see the spindle fly. 
 
 And we well remember how, in our child- 
 hood, 
 
 We wondered at the thread 
 
 That yiarrowed from the snowy wool. 
 
 Much more to see the pieces wed 
 And wind upon the whirling spool. 
 
 And we imagine that some of those gathered 
 here have found, by these wide kitchen fire- 
 places, hearts all their own, true and unchang- 
 ing as the old seven-day clocks brought from 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 41 
 
 the father-land — household treasures more val- 
 uable than those of the pirate Kidd, though 
 those supposed treasures were ^'^ of gold, yea, of 
 fine gold/' for 
 
 ^^ The only amaranthine flower on earth 
 
 Is Virtue — the only lasting treasure, Truths 
 
 We all have visited these old hearthstones ; 
 to some of us they are a part of our very child- 
 hood. Every vein in the marble; every broken 
 corner; every crumbling brick, find their proper 
 places, as we revisit, in memory, the dearest of 
 all familiar spots, for the most vivid pictures 
 of our early lives will always be seen in the 
 light of those hearthstone fires. It is not 
 the glare of noonday that shows the picture 
 best. The sunlight of the Present is often 
 too bright to view the Past : but the soft- 
 ened light of those long-ago firesides gives 
 distinctness to the features and character of 
 every loved one, until the invisible world seems 
 
42 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 to give back^ for the time, the forms, and even 
 the voices, of those who have gone before us. 
 Here is the true poetry of social life — and^ alas ! 
 the burial-place of our early romance. No 
 wonder^ then, that these firesides cause 
 
 ^^A thousand pleasing fantasies 
 To throng into our memorj^,'' 
 
 when so much we loved was gathered here ! 
 No wonder, when the hearth is growing cold, 
 and stranger-hands take away all that is famil- 
 iar, that we take an ember from the fires that 
 crackled in our childhood, to light uj) in our 
 hearts that vestal altar which goes out only 
 with our lives. There is no ruin more sad than 
 a broken and deserted fire-place ! And we have 
 these ruins scattered all through our valley. 
 No ivied tower or broken battlement presents 
 half the look of desertion. And we never felt 
 this so forcibly as when we visited, in the county 
 of Columbia, on an island in a beautiful lake 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 43 
 
 about midway between the Catskills and the 
 Berkshire Hills^ an old mansion rapidly falling 
 into decay— once the property of a distinguished 
 family^ to which a large tract along the Hudson 
 was ceded by a grant from Queen Anne. At 
 present but little more than the walls remain^ 
 weather-stained and windowless ; and here, 
 deeply set in these massive walls, can still be 
 seen the old fire-places of a century ago. And 
 here, as we sat musing, while the long twilight 
 deepened into night, the fire seemed again to 
 burn upon the hearthstone, perhaps brighter 
 than it ever did in reality, bathing in rosy light 
 even the old paintings our fancy hung upon 
 the walls. And looking into the strange faces 
 which silently gathered here, we endeavored to 
 dream out the unwritten histories of a hundred 
 lives. Here, in these very halls, long, long ago, 
 were recounted stories of the Eevolution, by 
 those just from the deadly conflict. Here, the 
 
44 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 last farewell given by trembling lips, to be 
 dreamed over again and again at Valley Forge, 
 and inciting to courage on the bloody fields of 
 Monmouth — for voices all about us whispered 
 deeds of truth and daring ; and in the gloom of 
 the old ruins gathered that noble family, whose 
 name and deeds are a part of our history ! 
 
 And here, a short time ago, it is said that 
 above one of these old mantles there was found 
 a quaint poem, commemorating an incident of 
 the Eevolution. It was written upon some 
 legal cap paper, moulded and blurred by time. 
 Whether some youthful Ohatterton in this way 
 attempted to deceive the people, we will allow 
 antiquarians and the curious to decide. This 
 strange poem, in half-forgotten English charac- 
 ters, was dedicated to the Children in the For- 
 ests — more frequently known as ^^ The Babes in 
 the Woods/' And in a trembling hand, w^hich 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 45 
 
 is in itself suspicious^ was written the following 
 queer and ungrammatical couplet : 
 * ^One of the many Poems ' wrote ' 
 
 BY 
 
 The talkative female — ^Annie K. Dote." 
 
 POEM. 
 "THE CAPTAIN WHO TOOK THE DISTRICT SCHOOL '' 
 
 All day long the snow clouds rolled 
 
 Up from the mountains, fold on fold; 
 
 All day long in a gloomy veil 
 
 The sky was lost and the sun was pale : 
 
 Along the Berkshires, bleak and gray, 
 
 The storm-king muttering seemed to say, 
 
 ^'- Day mingle with Night, Night mingle with 
 
 Day." 
 Mingling of Spirits truly hlack and gray^ 
 Gray day, black night, Spirits far more real 
 Than old Macbeth's witches " in the land o' the 
 
 Leal.'^ 
 
46 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 Happy, indeedj were the circles that night 
 Unbroken around the firesides bright ! 
 But in many a window a beacon shone 
 Casting its light through the ghostly storm, 
 Telling of hearts and of firesides warm 
 Waiting the coming of some one gone. 
 
 • ^^ What made sister go, my mother dear, 
 For the night is cold and the fire-side's bright ?'' 
 The mother says, with a falling tear, 
 ^^My daughter, you know 'tis Sunday night : 
 And since the days when I was young, 
 With lips as sweet as sister's are — 
 I meaUj to sing the songs then sung 
 Through all this section near and far — 
 
 •This night was set apart for those. 
 Who had a suit of Sunday clothes. 
 Who loved, and sometimes dared propose. 
 Sometimes at home, sometimes away, 
 And sometimes e'en till morning gray, 
 We sailed upon the moonlit lake 
 
OF THE HUDSON RIVER. 47 
 
 Watching the stars and ^ aerolites ^ 
 Throughout those summer Sunday nights, 
 Unwilling for the spell to break : 
 But never in a night so wild 
 Was I from home, my darling child. 
 And these were days long, long ago, 
 Days which for years you can not know, 
 Too soon to come, too soon to go. 
 And strange it is that one so young 
 Should hang upon my foolish tongue; 
 Strange that the same ^ old story ^ still 
 Should please our children just as well, — 
 But I wonder why they do not come." 
 And the mother peers into the gloom; 
 But naught is seen save the whirling snow, 
 And she turns again to the fireside glow. 
 '' Such a storm, my child, I never knew, 
 And childhood I passed among hills and dales 
 That caught the roughest, wildest gales 
 That ever swept a valley through; 
 
48 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 But such a night, so bleak and wild, 
 I never knew before, my child; 
 And yet in memory I hold 
 A story, by my grand-sire told, 
 And I'll repeat the silly rhyme 
 To pass away the idle time : 
 
 •^ There was a Captain, free and bold, 
 As ancient chroniclers have told, 
 Who, fighting in our fathers' cause 
 For freedom's right and freedom's laws. 
 Found time, at least upon his sword. 
 To write a name his soul adored. 
 And build huge castles in the air 
 All furnished for his darling fair. 
 Would that such castles were more real ! 
 How soon at Beauty's shrine we'd kneel 
 And make an eloquent appeal 
 To hearts like gun-boats clad in steel ! 
 But, to return unto our story : 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 49 
 
 Our hero^ from the fields of glory, 
 With battle-scars (upon his clothes), 
 On horse-back, through the drifting snows 
 Was struggling toward a beacon-light 
 Just glimmering through that dreadful night. 
 Alas ! fair maid with fluttering heart, 
 Your hopes no aid can now impart. 
 For, floundering coolly in a bank. 
 The exhausted steed and rider sank. 
 The whirling snow and blinding sleet 
 Would soon have made his winding sheet : 
 But thanks ! there was a School House near, 
 And hope began to swell his breast. 
 For there, he thought, he might have rest 
 From such a night so wild and drear. 
 
 The deed was suited to the thought — 
 
 The Horseman struggled through the snow, 
 The door was forced with a sturdy blow 
 
 And in the gallant steed was brought. 
 
50 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 The tinder-box a fire supplied 
 Which^ roaring up the chimney wide, 
 Imparted cheer to the cozy room 
 Which else had seemed a living tomb. 
 Wrapped in the midnight and the gloom. 
 The horse, thawed out, began to j)aw. 
 Asking for oats and accustomed straw. 
 Unmindful that he had the quarters 
 Where farmers sent their sons and daughters. 
 The Captain quietly looked around 
 On well-worn books and well-cut seats. 
 Adorned with countless ^Bills' and ^ Petes,' 
 And fell, at last, in slumber sound : * 
 To dream — of whom we must not tell : 
 You guess, and 'twill be just as well. 
 
 Suffice to say, in about a day. 
 For the simple fee of an X or a V 
 He answered ^ yes ' to questions three : 
 
 That is, ^Love,' ^ Honor,' and ^Obey,' — 
 They've changed the form some now-a-day — 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 51 
 
 Then hired a sleigh and felt 0. K. 
 
 But he never forgot, nor his darling ^Jule/ 
 
 The night he took the District School V'^ 
 
 So much for the written and the unwritten 
 language of the old hearthstones of Columbia. 
 Nor can we look at the tiles brought from 
 Holland, quaintly illustrating familiar passages 
 
 * As real poetry generally needs an explanatory note, we 
 feel constrained to say, for the benefit of logical readers : 
 There's truth in rhyme as well as prose, 
 It's only dressed in different clothes ; 
 Yet many critics, by the way, 
 Make light of poetry, and say 
 IV^ flimsy stuff, and very thin 
 To robe such things as nature in ; 
 And blush for Beauty when they see 
 Her form in such loose drapery. 
 'Tis true some charms should be arrayed 
 In thicker stuff than 's sometimes made ; 
 But, ever since our earliest youth, 
 We've often heard of ^^ naked truth," 
 And as the thinnest gauze or lace 
 Better reveals the beauteous face 
 Than thicker stuff; this, then, forsooth, 
 More nearly shows the naked truth ; 
 And hence the reason why some choose 
 This flimsy rhyme instead of prose, 
 Thinner instead of thicker clothes. 
 
52 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 in Bible history, without thinking how happy 
 were these fireside gatherings compared with 
 the modern feasts of pampered luxury. How 
 the old Legends and Traditions come thronging 
 upon us mingled with recollections of fireside 
 laughter and fireside tears! Here the story of 
 the ^^ Storm Ship'' was repeated over and over 
 again^ until we knew it as well as the story of 
 Blue Beard and the ill-fated Fatima ; and as it 
 is peculiarly [and distinctively the legend of 
 the early settlers, we must not pass it over 
 in silence. And still, about the glowing fire- 
 places of olden dwellings scattered along our 
 River, it is repeated in the long winter even- 
 ings somewhat as follows : 
 
 ^^ The word, one day^ was given from the fort, 
 standing on the spot now known as the Bat- 
 tery, that a ship was coming up the bay. It 
 passed from mouth to mouth, and street to 
 street, and soon put the little town of New 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 53 
 
 Amsterdam into a bustle. We can easily im- 
 agine the arrival of a ship in those early times 
 of the settlement was an event of no small im- 
 portance to the inhabitants. The artist waited 
 for his tools, the burgomaster for his supply of 
 Hollands, the good vrow for her gown and the 
 little children/' who, according to tradition — bj 
 way of parenthesis — did not look half as much 
 like olive plants as large plump cabbages, ^^were 
 continually in want of pocket handkerchiefs, 
 and stuff for aprons. It was^ in short, the great 
 yearly event of the Town, and from one end of 
 the year to the other, ^the ship,' Hhe ship,' was 
 the continual conversation." Many were, there- 
 fore, assembled upon the wharfs. Knots of old 
 weather-beaten sailors, and crowds of the Mr. 
 and Mrs. Burghers, all philosophically conjec- 
 turing what could be its mission. '^ On she 
 bore, steadily up the bay, and although repeat- 
 edly hailed, made no reply, but, sailing against 
 
54 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 both wind and tide, passed up the Hudson. 
 " Week after week, and month after month 
 elapsed, but she never returned; and it was rela- 
 ted that over the wide waters of Haverstraw and 
 Tappan Zee, she could be seen careening when 
 night and storm wrapped the river in gloom^ 
 and in the midst of the turmoil you could hear 
 the Captain giving orders in good Low Dutch. 
 Some suggested that if it really was a super- 
 natural apparition, as there was every reason to 
 believe, it might be Hendrick Hudson and his 
 crew of the ^Half Moon,' who, it was well 
 known, had once run aground in the upper part 
 of the river, in seeking a Northwest passage to 
 China." And perhaps it was the shadowy crew 
 returning to their periodical revels in the moun- 
 tains, for it was generally reported that Hen- 
 drick Hudson and his men really haunted the 
 Catskills, and these are supposed to have been 
 the ghostly nine-pin players, who some time 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 55 
 
 afterward entertained old Rip Van Winkle so 
 kindly^ and left him in sweet repose^ apart from 
 his family cares^ 
 
 ^^ To sleep through years of mighty wars. 
 And wake to science grown to more/' 
 To find the sign of another George; 
 Swinging above the Tavern door/' 
 
 People who live in this vicinity^ still insist 
 that they occasionally see her under some steep 
 
 bluff of the Highlands, all in deep shadow ex- 
 cepting her top-sails glittering in the moon- 
 light. 
 
 '^ See you beneath yon cloud so dark, 
 Fast gliding along a gloomy bark; 
 Her sails are full, tho' the wind is still, 
 And there blows not a breathy her sails to fill. 
 
 ^ i.'c -Jf i\i -;:j 
 
 By skeleton shapes her sails are furled. 
 And the hand that steers is not of this world. '^ 
 
 And why hasn't our river as good right to a 
 Phantom. Ship as Cape Horn, New Haven Har- 
 
56 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 bor or Deadman's Isle in the Grulf of St. Law- 
 rence ! 
 
 Another of these marvelous legends^ long ago, 
 in some idle moments was put into verse. We 
 would not vouch for its truthfulness^ and the 
 nearer we get to the locality of the scene, we 
 are sorry to say, the less it is believed, and yet 
 the account was told us in our childhood for 
 very truth. 
 
 On the banks of the Hudson near old Dobbs^ 
 
 Ferry, 
 A mansion still stands deserted and dreary 
 Around whose gables the ivy creeps, 
 Around whose walls even silence sleeps. 
 Deserted and drear is the ruined place 
 As it were the grave of a buried race. 
 Tradition says that long ago — 
 Perhaps a hundred years or so — 
 A family came from a town somewhere, 
 With obvious intentions of settling there; . 
 For a mansion they built prodigious in size 
 Which filled the neighbors with such sur- 
 prise 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 57 
 
 That it literally made them stick out their 
 
 (Pardon the muse for being precise, 
 
 You, I mean, who are overnice; 
 
 You who think the sacred nine 
 
 Breathe inspiration all divine. 
 
 And never stoop to earthly things. 
 
 But always soar on heavenly wings.) 
 
 And as the right is with the strong, 
 
 No way had they to redress the wrong; 
 
 But, strange to say, on a certain day, 
 
 A woman in white on the grounds appeared — 
 
 Perhaps a fairy, perhaps a fay — 
 
 And marshalled them all and led them away; 
 
 For all who looked upon her feared. 
 
 And trembling could not but obey; 
 
 And so, deserted were those halls. 
 
 For none returned who once were seen, 
 
 And very few were those I ween 
 
 Who dared to pass those mansion walls; 
 
 And many the legends, mysterious and queer, 
 
 About that home of perpetual fear. 
 
 'Twas said that often at midnight hour, 
 
 When the moon was full, on the chimney 
 
 tower 
 Her cold light trembled with fitful glare, 
 
58 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 And music strange filled earth and air, 
 As ^twere a dirge for the freed from pain, 
 Or sorrow snbdued for those that remain — 
 Sorrow! of all life's song the refrain! 
 
 But, to be brief, the strangest of all these 
 stories was that, on a certain evening in the 
 vicinity of the Highlands, a wedding was tak- 
 ing place in good old style between a Mr. Hen- 
 drick and a Miss Katrina, and just as the ^^you 
 do '' and the ^^ I will " had made the two a unit, 
 a fairy dressed in white came into the room and 
 took away the lovely and interesting Katrina. 
 Hendrick and the respective families for a num- 
 ber of days spent most of the time in weeping, 
 until it was reported that, in the vicinity of the 
 deserted mansion, two were seen, and both were 
 dressed like fairies. Hendrick immediately left 
 for this locality, examines the old deserted halls 
 by moonlight, but finds nothing of his Katrina. 
 Overcome with grief and disappointment he 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 59 
 
 seats himself upon the door-step and sadly 
 hums the following measure: 
 
 It is sweet to sit at evening, 
 
 When the west is painted red, 
 
 And to think of friends once with us, 
 
 Of the living and the dead. 
 
 It is sweet to hear at midnight, 
 
 Music stealing through the air, 
 
 While we feel our spirits rising 
 
 Heavenward on that silver stair: 
 
 Ever fonder, ever dearer. 
 
 Seems our youth that hastened by, 
 
 And we love to live in memory, 
 
 When our fond hopes fade and die. 
 
 Yes ! like forests that seem fairer, 
 
 When the leaves their freshness lose, 
 
 So the past those leaves now fading. 
 
 Tinged with memory lovelier grows. 
 
 The echoes startled from, their sleep 
 
 Had hardly died away. 
 
 When forth from out the shadows deep 
 
 The fairy held her way; 
 
 No shadow she threw in the moon's pale 
 beams, 
 
 But, like a passing form of light, 
 
 Presented herself to our hero's sight — 
 
60 LEGEND ,AND POETRY 
 
 Quite lost in sorrow and his dreams — 
 
 And thus the fairy begun to say: 
 
 I've watched you^ Hendrick, for many a day, 
 
 Weeping and wailing, but all in vain, 
 
 For ne'er can you see your darling again. 
 
 Weep for Katrina with eyes so blue; 
 
 Weep! well you may, for she was treu — 
 
 Few maidens ever loved as she — 
 
 Weep! Weep! it doesn't trouble me; 
 
 But 'though I'm not moved by pity, 
 
 I admire you for your courage; 
 
 And, if you can guess a riddle, 
 
 I will make you, too, immortal, 
 
 So that you can live forever 
 
 With your darling, your Katrina. 
 
 Wheie grows the flower, and what's its name, 
 
 Which blooms in winter and summer the 
 
 same. 
 The language of which some say is true. 
 Some say is false, now what say you.^ 
 
 Our hero knew not what to say 
 
 In answer to the cruel fay; 
 
 But a muse, from a bright and distant sphere, 
 
 Swiftly to his rescue flew, 
 
 And, breathing softly in his ear, 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 61 
 
 Whispered the answer plain and clear; 
 
 And to the fairy, mute with surprise, • 
 
 He answered, somewhat in this wise: 
 
 Say not all the flowers of the valley fade, 
 When pa nted leaves on the ground are laid, 
 And the carpet of nature^ curiously dyed, 
 Covers the vale and the mountain side; 
 Oh! no; there's a flower eartli' s frost never nips 
 In many a valley — the sweet two-lips 
 We find them in bowers of nature wild 
 Wherever we see the forest child, 
 Where'er streamlets flow or soft winds blow, 
 In lands that are wrapped in eternal snow. 
 We find these flowers, for sun or shade 
 Ne'er blights nor blasts nor makes them fade; 
 And even more than this is true. 
 For when they're pressed they bloom anew. 
 The fairy vanished but again appeared 
 Leading Katrina through the ruined halls. 
 And in the silence of that midnight hour. 
 Again were joined those hands once rudelj^ 
 
 torn. 
 We leave the hearer here to guess the rest. 
 How many times 'Hwo-lips" were fondly 
 
 pressed; 
 
62 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 How long tliey sat and watched the moon- 
 light fall 
 Upon the gable-roofs and ivied wall. 
 And still some people of that section say. 
 That when the stars roll in their middle way, 
 The immortal pair amid the ruins stand, 
 Just as they should be always^ hand in hand. 
 
 A Swedish traveler, moreover, tells us that 
 the early settlers of our towns and villages had 
 seats on the stoops of their dwellings, which, in 
 the evening, were filled with young people, and 
 passers by were obliged to greet everybody un- 
 less they would shock the politeness of the peo- 
 ple. In these good old days when, according to 
 Irving, the heart of a lover could not contain 
 more than one lady at a time, for quite evident 
 reasons, we recognize a blissful ignorance of the 
 '^ Blue Laws of Connecticut,'' for it has never 
 along our river been considered a crime fop a 
 person to repeat the '^ House that Jack Built'' 
 because therein the gentlemen 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 63 
 
 " All tattered and torn 
 Kissed the maiden a.ll forlorn/^ 
 
 But how far the politeness of our mothers can 
 be traced in some of our modern bellisms^ we 
 can only refer again to the language of Mr. 
 Knickerbocker: ^^Ah! blissful and never-to-be- 
 forgotten age, when there were neither public 
 commotions nor private quarrels^ neither perse- 
 cutions nor trials nor punishments; when the 
 shad in the river were all salmon; when every 
 man attended to what little business he was lucky 
 enough to have^ or neglected it if he pleased 
 without asking the opinion of his neighbor; 
 when nobody meddled with concerns above his 
 comprehension, or neglected to correct his own 
 conduct in his zeal to pull to pieces the charac- 
 ters of others/' These were, indeed, good old 
 days when the renowned Wouter Van Twiller 
 and the fat aldermen of the quiet city of New 
 Amsterdam ruled in peace and tranquility with- 
 
64 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 out issuing twenty-four paged proclamations; 
 when the good old burghers never disturbed 
 themselves to see whether the gates of Janus 
 were shut or ojDen^ but quietly imbibed rich 
 draughts of inspiration like the ancient poets 
 through oaten straws^ quaffing nectar that 
 looked very much like old Holland^ and eating 
 Ambrosia that had all the appearance of dough- 
 nuts. And while we^ to-day^ rejoice at the 
 prosperity of this beautiful valley^ happy in the 
 arts and refinements of a rich and later civil- 
 ization, we still love to wander among the monu- 
 ments of our early settlers and, it may be, moisten 
 with our tears the ivy which we ourselves 
 have planted. Slowly but surely every year re- 
 moves some landmark of the past. Even the 
 places w^here our fathers worshiped, with their 
 spires pointing to heaven from the very ground 
 hallowed by their ashes^^ are passing away; yes 
 
OF THE HUDSON, 65 
 
 ^^ They all are passing from our land, 
 
 Those churches old and gray, 
 In which our fathers used to stand. 
 
 In years gone by to pray/' 
 
 But there is in the poetry of this river 
 something still more interesting to the genius of 
 our people than even these crumbling ruins or 
 the strange traditions of the early settlers. 
 Here the great struggle for freedom has conse- 
 crated many a spot. The places where our 
 fathers met for council, the ruined ramparts 
 they defended with their lives; redoubts and bas- 
 tions, battered and broken : these are eloquent 
 to every heart ! Saratoga, Stillwater, Crown 
 Point, Old Ticonderoga, Stony Point, West 
 Point, White Plains, the Heights of Harlem 
 and the Heights of Brooklyn — each has a sep- 
 arate page in the story of the Eevolution! and 
 to all minds this history is filled with the poetic 
 element! The character of our generals, the un- 
 
66 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 flinching courage of those who with bleeding 
 feet tracked their way to liberty over the snows 
 of seven winters ; the sublime heroism and 
 devotion of a people imperiling everything but 
 their honor in the strife for their country : all 
 these afford the noblest material for lofty 
 song^ for the poetic element is defined to be a 
 spiritual sympathy with whatever is beautiful^ 
 grand or sublime^ and over our battlefields and 
 around ^^ our monuments which lift themselves 
 toward Heaven as if to tell the angels that here 
 human blood has flown for human freedom/'' 
 the very air is freighted with the beautiful^ the 
 grand and the sublime, and we feel justified in 
 our assertion that there is no other place in all 
 our country where poetry and romance are so 
 strangely blended with the heroic of our history. 
 To destroy the communication between 
 the Eastern and the Southern and Middle 
 States, was the plan of the English, hence the 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 67 
 
 Hudson reaching almost from Lake Champlain 
 to the Ocean^ and forming^ as it were, a natural 
 boundary, was the scene of many struggles; and 
 from the time the first messenger sped along 
 the ^^Old Post Eoad/' on the way from New 
 York to Albany, spreading the dread news of 
 War, the banks of the Hudson glowed with the 
 beacon lights of liberty, burning brighter and 
 brighter unto the perfect day. In the North, 
 on the plains of Saratoga, we see homeless and 
 wandering families, fleeing from the sound of 
 war. We read the sad story of Jajie McRea, 
 blanching the cheek of mother and maiden. 
 We read the long suffering of our northern army, 
 crowned at last by the surrender of Burgoyne. 
 This campaign was frequently referred to in the 
 popular songs of the day. And we have se- 
 lected a few lines from ^'The Old Saratoga 
 Song,'' as a specimen of the early poetry of our 
 Country. 
 
68 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 ^^The Nineteenth of September, 
 
 The morning cool and clear, 
 Brave Grates rode through our army, 
 
 Each Soldier's heart to cheer; 
 ^Burgoyne/ he cried, ^advances, 
 
 But we will never fly, 
 No, rather than surrender. 
 
 We'll fight him 'till we die/ 
 The news was quickly brought us 
 
 The enemy was near. 
 And all along our lines, then. 
 
 There was no sign of fear; 
 It was above Stillwater 
 
 We met, at noon that day, 
 And every one expected 
 
 To see a bloody fray. 
 Six hours the battle lasted. 
 
 Each heart was true as gold, 
 The British fought like Lions, 
 
 And we like Yankees bold; 
 The leaves with blood were crimson, 
 
 And then brave Gates did cry, 
 ^'Tis diamond now cut diamond,' 
 
 We'll beat them boys, or die ! " 
 
 This early minstrelsy of the Eevolution may 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 69 
 
 not be eminently poetical^ and yet, these songs 
 and ballads will in the years to come, be prized 
 far more highly, than many of the popular poems 
 of to-day. ^^The altars may have been humble 
 yet the the fires burned toward Heaven.'' We 
 give another valuable and historic specimen of 
 these poems, which have outlived the papers for 
 which they were written, and have come to be 
 regarded American antiquities. It may suggest 
 the enumeration of ships in the second book 
 of the Iliad, but its quaintness has probably no 
 parallel in ancient or modern literature. 
 
 THE LOSS IN BURGOYNE'S CAMPAIGN. 
 
 ^ ^British Prisoners, by convention, . . 2,442 
 Foreigners, by contra- vention, . . . . 2,198 
 Tories, sent across the lake, . . . . 1,100 
 Burgoyne and his suit in state, ... 12 
 
 Sick and wounded, bruised and pounded, ) ^^^^ 
 Ne'er so much before confounded, . [ 
 Prisoners of war, before convention, . 400 
 Deserters, come with kind intention, . 300 
 They lost at Bennington great battle, \ ^ ^oa 
 Where Starke's glorious arms did rattle, j ' 
 
300 
 
 ^ 4,413 
 
 70 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 Killed in September and October, . . 600 
 Ta'en by brave Brown, some drunk some 
 
 sober, . 413 
 
 Slain by high-famed Herkerman, ' 
 
 On both flanks, both rear and van, 
 Indians, suttlers, butchers, drovers. 
 Enough to crowd large plains all over. 
 And those whom grim death did prevent 
 From fighting 'gainst our continent. 
 And also those who stole away. 
 Lest they down their arms should lay. 
 Abhorring that obnoxious day. 
 The whole make fourteen thousand men, I^a ^q^ 
 • Who may not with us fight again/' j ' 
 
 But the great central place was West Point, 
 perched like an eagle's nest among the high- 
 lands and completely commanding the river. 
 The English at once recognized this as the 
 Gibraltar of the Hudson, and attempted to 
 buy for gold this strong-hold of the colonists. 
 But even treachery was unable to avail any- 
 thing, except to erect a monument of infamy 
 to tell the fate " of those who are Arnolds to 
 their country. This darkest plot, nursed in so 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 71 
 
 much secrecy, was, in the morning, preached 
 upon the house-tops. Andre was taken and a 
 monument erected to the memory of Paulding, 
 for there were not then two Arnolds in our 
 country; not two who could be bought by 
 British gold. '^^No!'' said Paulding, ^^ if you 
 would give us ten thousand guineas you would 
 not stir one step.'' 
 
 Andre, who has sometimes seemed the second 
 Sydney of England, young, brave and accom- 
 plished, was condemned as a spy and executed; 
 and we may be pardoned while speaking of the 
 execution of Andre in referring to the case of 
 Nathan Hale, '' perhaps the best educated 
 young man in our country, who had left the 
 halls of Yale University to die, if necessary, for 
 liberty. In attempting to return to the Amer- 
 ican lines he was seized and brought before Sir 
 William Howe, who ordered him to be executed 
 the next morning, and the sentence was carried 
 
72 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 into effect in the most barbarous manner. He 
 asked if he might see a friend^ one he loved bet- 
 ter than all things but liberty, one who had 
 given him up to his country, and he was de- 
 nied. He asked for a Bible and it was refused; 
 even his last request that a clergyman might 
 visit him was rejected with oaths. What a 
 striking contrast to the conduct of Washington, 
 who signed Andre's death-warrant with tears; 
 and, more cruel than all this, Hale's letters, 
 written the night before his death to his be- 
 trothed, his mother and other dear friends, were 
 broken open and burned in order that the 
 Behels should not know that they had a man in 
 their army who could die with so much firm- 
 ness. We have also read that ^^she who would 
 have been his bride went with her father at 
 night through the British lines, took his body 
 from the gibbet and carried it to their own 
 home!'' Can the English historian find nothing 
 
OF THE HUDSON. Yd 
 
 in this to extenuate the fate of Andre, and 
 would not England/ to-day, erect a monument 
 to the memory of Paulding rather than to the 
 memory of Arnold? West Point seems, more- 
 ov^er, the connecting link between the history of 
 the past and the present. The great names that 
 must ever live in our country's story; the wild- 
 ness of the cliffs, the beauty and sublimity 
 which are blended here; everything speaks of 
 freedom. 
 
 ^' Tue rocks, the rills, the woods and templed 
 bills/' nature's instructors, all, raise their voices 
 in chaating the glory of those whose deeds can 
 never die. Here, too, are gathered historic 
 n^lics as if met in centennial gathering, eloquent 
 trophies of victory; broken artillery of the field 
 of S.iratoga which ^'fought a good fight and 
 kept the faith/' and the old flags bearing the 
 red cross of England telling the glory and 
 shame of our Mother Country. Fitting place 
 
 4 
 
74 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 to muse ui3on our history^ and as we once stood 
 under the monument of "Kosciusko, sur- 
 rounded on every side by ever- varying beautj^ — 
 the Mattewan mountains of the Indians — we 
 thought of the bold charge of the young 
 Polish hero at the battle of Bemis Heights; his 
 night interview with Lafayette, and after our 
 country had taken its place among the nations 
 of the world, his sad fate upon the field of War- 
 saw, where the liberty of Poland died with 
 Kosciusko. And there, under that monument 
 erected to his memory, Ave felt, as we have never 
 felt before, how "sublime a thing a free people 
 is/' Autumn had touched with bright tints 
 the leaves of the forest, and every bush and 
 shrub, glowing with the rich hectic of a dying 
 year, seemed to say, like the burning bush of 
 Midian : " Take thy shoes from off thy feet for 
 the place on which thou standest is holy 
 ground/' And, over all, the rich sunset sprink- 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 75 
 
 ling its rosy flowers over the summit of the 
 cliffs, or rather a harjging sea of golden cyclades 
 -r-a dream of the poetS; half of earth and half 
 of heaven. 
 
 ^' What 'though no cloister gray or ivied column 
 Along this cliff their sombre ruins rear; 
 What 'though no frowning tower or temple 
 solemn 
 Of despots tell and superstition here, 
 Yet sights and sounds^ at which the world 
 
 have wondered, 
 Within these wild ravines have had their birth; 
 Young freedom's cannons from these glens 
 
 have thundered, 
 And sent their startling echoes o'er the 
 the earth; 
 And not a verdant glade or mountain hoary 
 But treasures up within the glorious story." 
 
 And while we mused upon the history of this 
 river lying at our feet, with its points of inter- 
 est crowding each other and almost blending, 
 we thought, as in the mediaeval days, there 
 were little shrines and chapels scattered along 
 
76 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 the route to the Holy Land^ where weary pil- 
 grims might turn aside from their journey to 
 pray; so along the banks of the Hudson, from 
 the '' Wilderness to the sea/' are scattered 
 shrines for patriotic devotion, where a whole 
 people, coming up from the red sea of war and 
 journeying — God grant — to the bright land of 
 promise, may bow in sincerity and thankfulness! 
 And, also, as in our art galleries we sometimes 
 turn away from the battle-scenes — although 
 they tell of victory and glory — and find relief 
 and pleasure in some little household picture, 
 so there are little stories, and some of them 
 embalmed in poetry, which will live as long as 
 ^^The Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon/' For 
 we imagine the leaves will never fade nor fall 
 from that '' old familiar tree '' a little ways from 
 the City of New York, and immortalized by 
 that beautiful lyric, which every child knows by 
 heart, by the poet who wrote ^^My Mother's 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 77 
 
 Bible/' — ^^ Woodman^ spare that Tree/' And 
 where in our language is there a more beautiful 
 picture ! 
 
 ^^ When but an idle boy 
 
 I sought its grateful shade. 
 In all their gushing joy. 
 
 Here too my sisters played^ 
 My mother kissed me here, 
 
 My father pressed my hand, 
 Forgive the foolish tear, 
 
 But let the old oak stand/' 
 
 On one occasion, when Mr. Russel was sing- 
 ing it at Boulogne, an old gentleman in the 
 audience, moved by the simple and touching 
 beauty of the lines, rose and said : I beg your 
 pardon, but was the tree really spared !" ^^ It 
 was," answered Mr. Russel, and the old gentle- 
 man resumed his seat amid the enthusiastic 
 plaudits of the whole assembly. Truly 
 
 '^Its glory and renown 
 
 Are spread o'er land and sea/' 
 
78 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 And a little to the north, we have ^^ Sleepy- 
 Hollow/' with its murmuring brook, rendered 
 famous for the ride of the ^'^Headless Horseman/' 
 the woes and mishaps of Ichabod Crane, the un- 
 successful schoolmaster, and the blooming Ka- 
 trina Van Tassel ; and still further to the north, 
 
 ^^ The moon looks down on an old Cro-nest, 
 She mellows the shade on his shaggy breast/' 
 
 And we take a trip with the culprit Fay, 
 
 In his lovely boat of shining shell ; 
 'Till above the Highlands far away, 
 The Catskills blue from the valley swell, 
 , And leaving the boat on the silvery strand, 
 We take a seat in the charmed car. 
 And over the fair and moonlit land, 
 We pass like the light of a falling star. 
 
 Eight over the ^^ Man in the Mountains, who, 
 for six thousand years, has ever looked up at 
 the changing beauty of the sky, 
 
 ^' Counting the stars in the bright jeweled 
 crown 
 As they roll so silently o'er, 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 79 
 
 With their golden wheels which leave not 
 a trace 
 Upon Grod's azure floor. 
 
 Andj as the moonlight bathes his upturned 
 brow, we imagine, like another Endymion re- 
 clining on the bank, he is beloved by 
 
 ^^That bright-eyed Goddess 
 Whom mortals call the moon/' 
 
 And a voice, soft, gentle and low, whispers in 
 his ear: ^^Eemember, Endymion of the Moun- 
 tain, the doom of the culprit Fay, for although 
 Diana presses thy cheek whenever she sinks to 
 rest, beware, it is only moonshine V And now 
 a drowsy murmur rises in the still night air, 
 as it were borne upward on floating chariots of 
 spray, 
 
 ^^ From greens and shades where the 
 
 Catterskill leaps 
 From cliff's where the wood flowers cling,'' 
 
 and we recall the legend and the lines of Bry- 
 
80 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 ant, which express so beautifully the well-nigh 
 
 fatal dream 
 
 ^' Of that dreaming one 
 
 By the base of that icy steep 
 
 When over his stiffening limbs begun 
 
 The deadly slumbers of frost to creep. 
 ^ i.j v;c ^ 
 
 There pass the chasers of seal and whale, 
 With their weapons quaint and grim, 
 
 And bands of warriors in glittering mail, 
 
 And herdsmen and hunters huge of limb, 
 There are naked arms with bow and spear, 
 
 And furry gauntlets the carbine rear. 
 There are mothers — and Oh, how sadly their 
 eyes 
 
 On their children's white brows rest ! . 
 There are youthful lovers — the maiden lies 
 
 In a seeming sleep on the chosen breast. 
 There are fair, wan women with moon-struck 
 
 ■•; 
 
 The snow-stars flecking their long, loose 
 hair." 
 
 The dashing water is again lost far away in 
 
 the deep forest, and we stand in the pale light 
 
 of morning upon the cliff in front of the Moun- 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 81 
 
 tain House^ to take in at a glance the wide 
 beauty of our Kiver. Night is fast melting in the 
 dawn^ a deep blue i^ests upon the whole valley 
 as it were a sea lying silent at our feet, and the 
 Berkshire Hills seem like immense waves roll- 
 ing on from the distant horizon. Patiently we 
 wait the Sun's advent, and as the rosy dawn 
 announces the morning coming with '^ looks all 
 vernal and with cheeks all bloom/' the windoivs 
 of the Mountain House one after another be- 
 gins to reveal undreamed visions of loveliness, 
 and unmindful of the words of the culprit Fay, 
 it were really difficult to tell which had the 
 deeper interest, the Sun's rising in the East, or 
 the daughters in the West. The rosy clouds of 
 the one; the tender blushes of the other ; the 
 opening eye-lids of the morning, or the opening 
 eye-lids of innocence, the bright ambrosial 
 locks hanging far and wide along the deep blue 
 chiseled mountain side, or the uncombed rip- 
 
82 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 pies which, like mountain streams receiving ad- 
 ditions from other sources, would probally be- 
 come beautiful water-falls. In four minutes 
 more by solar time, and the sun would sprinkle 
 the golden dust of light over the valley of the 
 Hudson. The East is all aglow, and, as ice 
 stand musing the fire burns, yes brighter and 
 brighter, as if the distant hills were an altar, 
 and a sacrifice was being offered up to the God 
 of Day. 
 
 "And see! The sun himself on wings 
 Of glory up the East he springs, 
 Angel of light which from the time 
 Those Heavens began their march sub- 
 dime. 
 Has first of all the starry choir 
 Trod in his maker's steps of fire.'' 
 
 And as merry voices ring out from the win- 
 dow frames of Beauty, we can but add, to com- 
 plete the sketch — 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 83 
 
 And 80x3 ! The daughters in the West 
 In mirthful glee and half — suppressed^ 
 Angels of morn! who, from the time 
 Man ever saved a single dime, 
 Have always longed and prayed to go 
 Wherever there was any show. 
 
 Cities and villages below us spring into be- 
 ing, and misty shapes rise from the valley, as 
 if Day had rolled back the stone from the 
 Sepulchre of Night, and it was rising trans- 
 figured to Heaven. Adown and up the river 
 for the distance of sixty miles, sails of sloops 
 and schooners drift lazily along, while below 
 us the little 
 
 '' ferry boats plie 
 Like slow shuttles through the sunny warp 
 Of threaded silver from a thousand brooks/' 
 
 Truly the Catskills were a fitting place for 
 the artist Gole to gather inspiration to com- 
 plete that beautiful series of engravings ^' The 
 
84 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 Voyage of Life/' for no finer mountains in all 
 the world overlook a finer river. 
 
 And if tlie groves were sacred to the ancients 
 w^here the fabled Orpheus sung, sacred indeed 
 to us must be the Kiver of Sunnyside, Idle- 
 wild and Undercliff", the home of Irving, of 
 Willis and Morris! all of whom but a short 
 time ago laid down the pen which wrote the 
 heart's own language, and made our Hudson 
 the Rhine of America. Nor can we speak the 
 name of Washington Irving, without thinking 
 of that monument more lasting than brass, 
 which he has erected to his memory whose 
 foundation lies deep in the hearts of the Ameri- 
 can people. For as the lovely vales of the 
 Arno are always associated with the name of 
 Virgil, and the beautiful banks of Ayr are im- 
 mortal as the name of Burns, so the name of 
 Irving will always be associated with the name 
 of the Hudson. In his own words "lb h'i> 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 85 
 
 iDeen my lot in the course of a somewhat wan- 
 dering life to behold some of the streams of the 
 old world, most renowned in history and song; 
 yet none have been able to efface the pictures- 
 of my native stream, stamped early on my 
 mind;'' and again he says: ^^I thank God that 
 I was born on the banks of the Hudson, for I. 
 fancy I can trace much of what is good and 
 pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to 
 my early companionship with this glorious 
 river/' How the literature of our country and 
 particularly our river is indebted to his genius! 
 And we ought not to forget how the sublime 
 and beautiful in nature are interwoven with the 
 political and moral development of a people. 
 We can not live in the midst of this beautiful 
 scenery, without feeling its inspiration in our 
 hearts, inciting us to something nobler and bet- 
 ter. It is impossible to be slaves where all na- 
 ture speaks of liberty; and in tracing the prog- 
 
86 LEGENDS AND POETRY 
 
 ress of freedom from the time when the words 
 of Luther electrified Europe^ we see its first 
 footsteps^ like the approach of morning upon 
 the mountains, and along the banks of rivers ! 
 We see the lights of religious liberty, blazing 
 upon the clear streams of Switzerland; we hear 
 the voice of Calvin from mountain-walled Gre- 
 neva ; and when almost exiled from Europe, 
 takes up the words of Knox, ^^ Grive me Scot- 
 land or I die ; '' and in the deep fastnesses of 
 her hills, and in the deeper hearts of a people 
 who drank in liberty with the very air they 
 breathed, awaited patiently the hour of pro- 
 claiming to the world the right of private judg- 
 ment, both in religion and in politics ; ever 
 teaching that noble sentiment of loyalty to cori- 
 viction, which led Charles the first through the 
 windows of Whitehall upon the scaff'old, and 
 banished the House of Stuart from the Throne 
 of England. It crosses the ocean and lays here 
 
OF THE HUDSON. 87 
 
 the foundation of a Republic, where civil and 
 religious government becomes civil and relig- 
 ions liberty^ and the Divine Right of Kings be- 
 comes the Divine Rights of Men, And here 
 along our fair streams this transplanted liberty 
 will ever flourish, and along this the fairest 
 stream it will gather Poetry from its Legends^ 
 Hope from its History, and a Consciousness of 
 Grod from its Beauty. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Many of the names of the towns and cities 
 along the Hudson at once suggest their origin. 
 We give the derivation and signification of 
 some of the most important. 
 
 Brooklyn — BreuJcelen, Broken-land^ from the 
 unevenness of the surrounding country. 
 
 The old Dutch name of Westchester was 
 Vreedlandtj Peace-land. 
 
 Havers traw^ some say a ^' place of straw ;'^ 
 others^ ^^ out of straw/' 
 
 Stony Point retains its Dutch name^ trans- 
 lated. ^ 
 
 The Donder Bergh and the Kills of Jans 
 Peek retain their Dutch names. The promon- 
 tory just above, called Antonies Neus, corrupted 
 
11 APPENDIX. 
 
 into St. Anthony's Nose, was named after An- 
 - tony de Hooge, Secretary of the Colony of Kens- 
 selaerwyck . 
 
 Newburgh, settled by the Palatines, signi- 
 fying New Town, 
 
 Yonkers, Yonk-lierr^ named after the young 
 lord or young sir of the Phillipsie manor. 
 
 Sing Sing, called from the Chinese city Tsing 
 Tsing^ a name given to the place by a merchant 
 who traded with China. 
 
 Poughkeepsie, Indian name Apokeepsing, sig- 
 nifying ^^Safe Harbor. '' 
 
 Wilt-wick^ the old Dutch name for the town 
 of Kingston, literally Wild wick or Indian wick. 
 
 The Dutch built a Eedoubt on the banks of 
 the creek, where it flows into the river. The 
 kill took the name of Kedoubt' kill, afterwards 
 Eundout, hence Rondout. 
 
 Hyde Park, named in honor of Lady Ann 
 Hyde, afterwards Queen of England. 
 
 Khinebeck ; some say, a combination of two 
 words, Beekman and Khine, a family from the 
 Khine who first settled there. Perhaps the better 
 
APPENDIX. Ill 
 
 derivation is the resemblance of the cliffs to 
 those on the middle Khine, Beckj in Dutch^ sig- 
 nifying cliff. 
 
 Hudson is supposed to be the point where 
 Hendrick Hudson anchored^ the 16th of Sept- 
 ember^ 1609^ and sent little boats up the river. 
 
 Claverack, Het Clauver Back, ^Hhe Clover 
 reach.'' The reach at Hudson is one of the 
 thirteen reaches into which the river is divided. 
 
 Kinderhook^ signifying '^ Children's corner." 
 
 Stuyvesant, named after old Peter Stuyve- 
 sant. 
 
 Coeymans^ named after one of the early inhab- 
 itants. The creek and neighborhood originally 
 were called Hockatock. 
 
 Castleton^ named from Castle Island^ where 
 the Dutch had a fort. 
 
 Po-can-ti'ho was the old Indian name for 
 Tarrytown. 
 
 Coxsackie and Nyack are both of Indian 
 origin. 
 
 Greenhusli^ Het Greene-Bosch^ the Dutch name 
 for ^'The Pine Woods." 
 
lY APPENDIX. 
 
 Albany^ once called Bever-wyck, and Wil- 
 liamstadt. A fort was erected there in 1623, 
 and the place was sometimes called Fort Au* 
 rania. Its present name was given in honor of 
 the Duke of Albany in 1664, on the surrender 
 of the fort to the English. The Indians called 
 it Shaunaugh-ta-da, or once ^' The Pine Plains/' 
 
 Troy in 1786 called Ferryhook. In 1787 
 called Kensselaerwyck. In the fall of 1787 the 
 settlers began to use the name of Vander- 
 heyden, who once owned a great part of the 
 ground where the city now stands. Jan. Oth, 
 1789, the Freeholders of the town met and 
 gave it the name of Troy. 
 
 The river was called for the first few years 
 after its discovery, by some of the settlers, the 
 ^^ Manhattes,'^ after a tribe of Indians living at 
 its mouth, by others the ^' Mauritius '' and ^^ de 
 groote'' River, (The great river,) afterwards 
 called the North river, not so much from its 
 course as to distinguish it from the Delaware, 
 which they called the "^ South'' river. The In- 
 
APPENDIX. V 
 
 dians called it the '^ Shate-muc/' The English 
 gave it the name of The Hudson Eiver^ by way 
 of continual claim as Hendrick Hudson was of 
 English birth. The Spaniards called it ^^ The 
 Kiver of the Mountains/' 
 
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